The current set of experiments was designed to explore the processing of spatial information during reading, specifically the "spatial-shift" effect and the "spatial-gradient" effect. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that when participants were presented with text alone (i.e., without prior map memorization, virtual…

A referential metaphor is a cohesive tie between lexical items that are metaphorically related, (e.g. "'The seagull' took the bread from the coffee table. No one heard the 'thief'"). The reference from "the thief" back to "the seagull" is metaphorical because thieves are human. The present article presents arguments…

We examined the impact of prospective information on the processing of information occurring within the present timeline of narrative stories. Participants read target sentences that were consistent with events occurring within a protagonist's present timeline but inconsistent with events in the protagonist's future. When prospective information…

Readers often prioritize processing and comprehension of information perceived as relevant to a particular intention. Using a repeated-measurement study, we investigated how readers' prior beliefs and external reading perspectives influence processing and comprehension of belief-relevant texts on two socioscientific controversies. University…

We segment what we read into meaningful events, each separated by a discrete boundary. How does event segmentation during encoding relate to the structure of story information in long-term memory? To evaluate this question, participants read stories of fictional historical events and then engaged in a postreading verb arrangement task. In this…

Analyzing constructed responses, such as think-alouds or self-explanations, can reveal valuable information about readers' comprehension strategies. The current study expands on the extant work by (1) investigating combinations and patterns of comprehension strategies that readers use and (2) examining the extent to which these patterns relate to…

The current study examined whether readers encode the thoughts of story characters. Participants read narratives in which characters were described as either needing or not needing to remember a list of words. Across several experiments readers recalled more words in a free recall task when the story character was described as making an effort to…

According to theories of validation, people routinely check incoming information against prior knowledge during comprehension. On these theories, information is validated if it fits with prior knowledge. Some researchers argue that information needs to be successfully validated before being incorporated into the situation model. We report five…

Informed by a theoretical model of satirical uptake, this study investigated processing behavior and comprehension of satirical news articles. Reading times for segments of minimally different satirical and non-satirical texts were collected using within-subjects (Experiment 1) and between-subjects (Experiment 2) designs. Segment reading times and…

In the present article, we examined the effect of the reading medium and the reading time-frame on text processing, metacognitive monitoring of comprehension, and comprehension outcomes. The eye movements of 116 undergraduates were recorded while they read three texts in print and three texts on a tablet under self-paced reading time or under time…

The study of word-to-text integration (WTI) provides a window on incremental processes that link the meaning of a word to the preceding text. We review a research program using event-related potential indicators of WTI at sentence beginnings, thus localizing sources of integration to prior text meaning independently of the current sentence. The…

Compelling and interesting introductions are considered an important way of fostering reader engagement with expository-text content. But only a handful of projects have examined this prescriptive advice. In three experiments, we examined the effects of two different genres of introductions--narrative and expository--on comprehension and memory…

Despite substantive work on the cognitive processes underlying comprehension, little research has examined the "phenomenological" nature of reading. We investigated how readers' experiences of visual and verbal thought related to their transportation into the narrative text and whether these were influenced by perspective-taking.…

We investigated how affective states influence expository text comprehension and whether text valence moderates the effects (i.e., mood congruency). In Experiment 1 participants were randomly assigned to a happy or sad affective state (elicited via films) before reading a positive or negative version of a scientific text on animal adaptations.…

This study examined the relationship between refutation texts and attention allocation by focusing on the interaction between important reader-and-text characteristics. Specifically, the authors investigated how prior knowledge and text-based interest affect attention allocation on refutation/control statements, topic, and explanatory and…